Modern Class Warfare Draws Slave-Era Parallels

[lakhota]

Still fighting against own cause

Mississippi seceded from the Union 150 years ago this week (Jan. 9). But the intermittent, sometimes bitter, argument over whether the Civil War was “about slavery” again is the focus of public debate.

Actually, both sides are right. And deciphering this paradox can go a long way toward explaining a perplexing aspect of our current political struggles.

Many have been puzzling over why so many middle-class Americans were persuaded to demonstrate and vote against their own interests — supporting low taxes for the very rich.

Here in Mississippi, we have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.

On one side of the debate over whether the South seceded and fought because of slavery is irrefutable evidence. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” the Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union begins, “the greatest material interest of the world.”

The sentiment in the Union, the declaration complains, “denies the right of property in slaves.”

On the other side are those Mississippians who point out that their great-to-x-power granddaddy, who fought valiantly for the Rebel cause, owned no slaves — so clearly, he was not fighting for slavery.

Obviously, Mississippi and the other Southern states seceded and fought the Civil War to protect their “peculiar institution” — as they plainly stated in their documents of secession. When South Carolina seceded, three weeks before Mississippi, its declaration focused on the North’s attacks on slavery and the “election of a man to the high office of president of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

The Confederate Constitution contained a provision that no law denying “the right of property in negro [sic] slaves” could ever be passed.

Yet it should be almost equally obvious that the vast majority of those who fought on the Confederate side but owned no slaves were not fighting to defend slavery. Rather, they were duped by the planter aristocracy into fighting to protect the slave “property” of the rich.

Slaveholders riled the region’s less affluent whites by talk of a struggle to maintain their freedom from the federal government that, the planters told them, wanted to take away their liberty.

The slaveholders were able to persuade other white Southerners to fight, kill and die for a cause that was, in fact, against their own interests. Slavery worked against whites who owned no slaves. They had to compete with those who had this cheap source of labor. Protecting slavery also made the South hostile to other reforms, including industrialization, that could have benefited less affluent whites.

This story line should sound familiar to us now.

What is happening in the nation’s political economy today is all too similar to what transpired a century and a half ago. The benefits now accruing to middle-class Americans from concentrating more and more wealth and power at the very top — like the benefits 150 years ago of slavery to non-slaveholding whites — can be measured in negative numbers. Unemployment remains high in large part because a consumption-based economy is dependent on a less inequitable distribution of income.

Once again, talk about putative threats to “freedom” and “liberty” is being used to scare ordinary citizens into acting in the interests of the wealthy, who are focused on their own concerns, not on behalf of the people they are stirring to anger.

As was true 150 years ago, one way less affluent people are being misled into acting against their own interest is through the argument that the threat to their well-being comes from people with darker skins — now Latino immigrants — rather than from those with much greater wealth.

To my knowledge, slaveholders never thought of the brilliant marketing ploy of using something like the tea party as their symbol. But they found it expedient to identify their cause with that of the American War for Independence. They sold their undertaking as the War for Southern Independence — in which the Confederates were fighting for freedom against the federal government in the same way that Americans had fought for freedom against the British.

“For far less cause than this,” the Mississippi declaration asserts, “our fathers separated from the Crown of England. ... We follow their footsteps.”

The Civil War, however, was far from a “war for Southern independence.” It was a “war to maintain Southern dependence.” Its objective, for the members of the white Southern elite who had engineered secession, was to preserve their dependence on slaves to work their land.

Unlike the Spirit of ’76, the Spirit of ’61 saw no contradiction between liberty and slavery. Rather, it defined liberty in terms of the right to deny liberty to others. It was not about states’ rights but about states’ wrongs.

Slaveholders lost on the battlefields in the 1860s. But the cause of the top 2 percent of the nation won at the polls in 2010, when politicians opposed to any increase in top tax rates and any meaningful regulation of financial institutions were victorious. For less affluent people, who voted against their interests last year, the cause remains what it was for the less affluent people deceived into fighting against their own interests 150 years ago: a Lost Cause.

www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47498.html

[lakhota]

Yet it should be almost equally obvious that the vast majority of those who fought on the Confederate side but owned no slaves were not fighting to defend slavery. Rather, they were duped by the planter aristocracy into fighting to protect the slave “property” of the rich.

Slaveholders riled the region’s less affluent whites by talk of a struggle to maintain their freedom from the federal government that, the planters told them, wanted to take away their liberty.

The slaveholders were able to persuade other white Southerners to fight, kill and die for a cause that was, in fact, against their own interests. Slavery worked against whites who owned no slaves. They had to compete with those who had this cheap source of labor. Protecting slavery also made the South hostile to other reforms, including industrialization, that could have benefited less affluent whites.

I kept thinking of the Tea Party, Fox News, Koch brothers, and others on the radical right as I read that article. However, I didn't need that article to tell me what I already knew. It's unbelievable that some Americans are falling for this - again. If states keep "whitewashing" history books, future generations may be reading that the Civil War was fought over cotton candy instead of slavery.

[Politically_Incorrect12]

So you are saying that people on the right vote against their self interest for thinking people should be treated a certain way, even if it's not in their personal best interest; while people on the left are selfish since they believe others should be punished for being more successful?

[Politically_Incorrect12]

Overall this posting is just more of the same from you.

[handyman2]

I was taught in my history books that the issue was not over slavery but over states rights. The premise being that each state although part of the union had the right to chose it's own destiny.
True the core issue was the right to chose slavery or not to but they felt they had a right to make that choice.
Oddly enough there were more slaves in the north and particularly the northeast than in the south.
Also lost in most discussions is that the immigrant plantation holders were not the first to bring slaves to the south. Wars were fought between the Cherokees and other tribes against the Creek indians of what is now south Georgia and Alabama. The Creeks practiced capturing rival indian tribes and making them slaves to the Creek nation.
Later many indian and by then black slaves ran away to the swamps in Floridia which the slave owners had general Jackson go there to get them back and was defeated in the swamps by what is now called the Seminole indians The term Seminole is a name that means runaway and is not actually a blood tribe.

[Tennesseer]

Jan 15, 2011 10:57:00 GMT -5 handyman2 said:

Oddly enough there were more slaves in the north and particularly the northeast than in the south.

I suppose this comment may be true before 1790, but then most of the southern states (those which became the CSA) didn't even exist other than Tennessee, Virginia and North and South Carolina.

By 1860, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas had become states and joined Tennessee, Virginia and North and South Carolina to ultimately became the Confederate States of America (CSA).

Also by 1860, the northern states had freed their slaves (other than New Jersey with 18 slaves).

The map below shows the distribution of slaves in the United States in 1790 and 1860:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/Slavery_map.jpg

Even in 1790, Virginia, and North and South Carolina had more slaves than the north.

[comokate]

Actually, Georgia became a state on January 2, 1788. It is the 4th oldest state in the US, the first three being "older" by less than 30 days.

www.u-s-history.com/pages/h928.html


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_statehood

Seminole Tribe of Florida
"The Spaniards called some of these indigenous Florida people cimarrones, or free people, because they would not allow themselves to be dominated by the Europeans. The word was taken into the Maskókî language and, by the mid 1800s, U.S. citizens referred to all Florida people as "Seminoles." "
www.semtribe.com/History/Introduction.aspx

[formerexpat]

www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9K5IEN81.htm

You might actually want to read the particulars of the "tax cuts" and see who they benefit most. The top 2% is not the answer.

How about spending more time researching the validity of what you post rather than posting useless garbage that can easily be proven incorrect?

[comokate]

Jan 15, 2011 22:03:15 GMT -5 formerexpat said:

www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9K5IEN81.htm

You might actually want to read the particulars of the "tax cuts" and see who they benefit most. The top 2% is not the answer.

How about spending more time researching the validity of what you post rather than posting useless garbage that can easily be proven incorrect?

Say what ??

[robinking]

Lakhota,

I feel sorry for you You have a dense painbody and can't enjoy the present moment, so you must always indulge in the past pains of history. History is IMPORTANT for one reason, so it isn't repeated. Not so one can inflict pain on another class who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted by forefathers. People who dwell on the sins of the past and demand someone from the "oppressor" class repay someone from the "victim" class is living in the past and can't enjoy the present moment. How does society determine who is the victim and who is the oppressor? In the case of slavery, do we first determine an amount of reparations to be distributed. Do we allocate those funds based upon the percentage of melanin? What about new immigrants from Africa? Do they also get a slice, even though their ancestors where never slaves? In fact, why not go after the coastal Africans who took part in the slave trade? I'm rather tired of bringing up a past I and my forefathers took no part in (all my relatives came from Europe in the early 1900s). You are a divisive poster. Your Leftist views only serve to divide and add nothing to the discussion but anger and resentment. I feel sorry for you and those around you.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

I find this kind of mental gymnastics from the left astonishing- especially when there is a much more glaring analogy: the abortion debate.

Class warfare is a fraud. If slaves lived as well as the people pissing and moaning that they "have not" we'd still have slaves. Though the happy, and voluntary part sort of ruins the definition-- which of course is why the left can't ever manage to foment the violent revolution they seek in free and open societies-- especially our own.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

...and of course the extent that you are forced to work for someone else-- at the point of a gun-- is the very definition of slavery. Currently, 53% of American households carry the dead weight of 100% of the tax burden. The top 50% carrying virtually ALL of it.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

"point of a gun?", you ask? Just don't pay your taxes for a little while. They will send the people with guns.

[lakhota]

Jan 16, 2011 17:27:06 GMT -5 robinking said:

Lakhota,

I feel sorry for you You have a dense painbody and can't enjoy the present moment, so you must always indulge in the past pains of history. History is IMPORTANT for one reason, so it isn't repeated. Not so one can inflict pain on another class who had nothing to do with the pain inflicted by forefathers. People who dwell on the sins of the past and demand someone from the "oppressor" class repay someone from the "victim" class is living in the past and can't enjoy the present moment. How does society determine who is the victim and who is the oppressor? In the case of slavery, do we first determine an amount of reparations to be distributed. Do we allocate those funds based upon the percentage of melanin? What about new immigrants from Africa? Do they also get a slice, even though their ancestors where never slaves? In fact, why not go after the coastal Africans who took part in the slave trade? I'm rather tired of bringing up a past I and my forefathers took no part in (all my relatives came from Europe in the early 1900s). You are a divisive poster. Your Leftist views only serve to divide and add nothing to the discussion but anger and resentment. I feel sorry for you and those around you.

It is my intent to be thought-provoking! After reading the OP, can you honestly say you see no parallels between events leading up to the Civil War and what is currently taking place with average citizens being manipulated by wealthy puppet masters to serve their elitist agenda?

History is IMPORTANT for one reason, so it isn't repeated.

True, but there are also other good reasons to have true history. What if we wanted to repeat something "good" from the past?

[burnsattornincan]

You are a divisive poster. Your Leftist views only serve to divide and add nothing to the discussion but anger and resentment. I feel sorry for you and those around you.

Ouch! That could be felt all the way up here to Canada. Mr. Lakhota, I really do feel sorry for you. /Dalton

[lakhota]

Well, Mr. Burns, since your "karma" is up to 77, what you say must be true. Has the Dalai Lama contacted you yet?

[burnsattornincan]

Don't blame me Mr. Lakhota. I've inquired around and no one will fess up. I've got one devoted admirer on my hands.

[lakhota]

Maybe it's Waylon Smithers?

[jkapp]

>>It is my intent to be thought-provoking! After reading the OP, can you honestly say you see no parallels between events leading up to the Civil War and what is currently taking place with average citizens being manipulated by wealthy puppet masters to serve their elitist agenda?<<

That depends...who are the real slaves in current times? People working for a living and not wanting government to tax the nation into mass poverty? Or those that are completely dependent on government to take from others to give them a living?

[burnsattornincan]

Maybe it's Waylon Smithers?

Excellent!

[lakhota]

The Class War Launched by America's Wealthiest Is Getting More Savage

Countries with wide income inequality are unstable: they have large underclasses, high rates of crime and little opportunity. We’re in a class war.

It’s the corporations and the very wealthiest against all the rest of us. We’re losing.

In 1962 the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much. Is that a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, just a few of them a little bit higher? No.

From 1950 to 1965, median family income rose from $24,000 a year to $38,000 a year. That’s close to 4 percent a year, close to 60 percent over 15 years. That’s a rising tide.

In 1964 there was a big tax cut. That’s when things started to slow down for average people. By the mid-'70s the rise of the middle class stalled. From 1975 to 2010 median family income rose $42,936 to $49,777. That’s not quite 16 percent over 25 years, less than six-tenths of 1 percent per year.

Briefly, when taxes went up under Clinton, median income rose, peaked at $52,587 in 1999, and then, after Bush cut taxes, declined. Keep in mind that this is median family income. In the '50s and '60s, family income was usually earned by a single person. Today, family income normally comes from at least two people.

At the same time, income for the richest soared. In 1979 the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of all U.S. income. Now they earn 24 percent of all U.S. income. One percent of Americans earn nearly one-fourth of all the income in the country.

Then came the crashes of 2001 and 2008 and the recessions that followed.

The crash hasn’t changed anything. Things have become worse.

From 1990 to 2005, adjusted for inflation -- the minimum wage is down 9 percent, production workers’ pay is up only over 15 years 4.3 percent.

At the same time, the rich get richer:

Corporate profits are up 106.7 percent. The S&P 500 is still up 141.4 percent since 1990. CEO compensation is up 282 percent. Call it transfer of wealth. Or call it class warfare.

What’s wrong with the rich getting richer?

Slate's Timothy Noah, in "The United States of Inequality," wrote, “Income distribution in the United States [has become] more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.”

Take a look at that list.

Countries with wide income inequality don’t lead the world in research, technology, industry, and innovation. They’re unstable. They have large underclasses. They have high rates of crime. They have little opportunity.

In such countries the rich have disproportionate power. They take control of all aspects of society, especially government, the police, and the judiciary. They become self perpetuating.

If current trends continue, “The United States by 2043 will have the same income inequality as Mexico.” (Tula Connell, Mar 12, 2010, AFL-CIO Now.)

Countries with high levels of income inequality are third-world countries.

Here’s how regular people can deal with cultures of high inequality. The primary, and best, weapon is a progressive tax structure. As people move up the income ladder they pay a higher rate at each rung. Unearned income –from dividends and capital gains – is taxed at least as high as earned income (money that people actually work for.) Tax cuts for the wealthy mark, with great precision, the decline in fortunes of ordinary Americans. Tax cuts for the wealthy mark, with equal precision, the increase in inequality. We had a chance to slow the process by letting the last round, the Bush tax cuts, expire. We’ve lost that round.

People can become educated and move on up.

Back in the '60s, when I was growing up, New York City had free universities. The burgeoning SUNY system charged $400 tuition a semester. The minimum Regents scholarship was $400 a semester. If a student didn’t get one, he or she could easily earn enough to pay tuition with a summer job. The same held true for most state university systems across the country.

Today, students have to borrow. The median student debt for an undergraduate degree – forget about a doctorate, law school, and med school – is $20,000. The first, and truest, lesson you learn when you go to college is how to be in service to the banks.

We’ve lost that battle.

What does it mean?

“Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.

“Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.”

(Understanding Mobility in America, April 26, 2006, Tom Hertz, American University.)

Working people can organize and form unions. Unions do more than raise wages. They improve working conditions and safety. They provide protection against abuse, intimidation and wrongful dismissal. Non-union employers have to compete, partly to keep out unions, so the existence of unions helps everyone. Unions also have political power, they spend money and mobilize their members to vote.

Businesses have become very good at beating unions. And they’re getting better at it. According to Business Week, ("How Wal-Mart Keeps Unions at Bay,” 10/28/2002),"over the past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability to fend off labor groups."

In the 1940s a third of private sector employees were unionized. Now it’s down to just 7.2 percent. Unions only remain strong in the public sector, where membership is 37 percent.

If you read the papers or watch the news, you will see an anti-public service union story almost everyday. These are the people who teach your kids, pick up the trash, clean the sewers, drive the buses and trains, they’re the police and fireman. The stories will tell you their pension fund liabilities will bankrupt the states; that it’s unionized teachers who have ruined our schools. Charter schools – without unions – are the new favorite charity for billionaires.

When a country is, or becomes, a third-world country, the other thing people can do is run. To some place richer and freer. Like America.

But when America becomes Mexico, where you gonna run to?

www.alternet.org/economy/149531/the_class_war_launched_by_america%27s_wealthiest_is_getting_more_savage/?page=1

[lakhota]

Angry Progressive Coalition to Protest Billionaire Gathering Hosted by Koch Brothers, Major Tea Party Funders

Progressives are planning huge counter-event to educate about the Kochs and their billionaire cronies, and peacefully march to give an alternative to their hard-right agenda.

Increasingly, Democrats, liberals and progressives are coming to understand that the Koch brothers, a secretive right-wing billionaire family that pours limitless money into virtually every destructive anti-democratic initiative affecting tens of millions of Americans, are "Public Enemy Number One."

More and more, leaders and activists are shifting tactics and confronting the Kochs face-to-face, challenging their efforts to steal the American Dream and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans by buying our democracy, and trying to take control of civic and economic life. The Kochs' goal appears to be nothing short of transforming America into a radical right-wing, corporate, third-world-like country, crushing social safety nets, and letting the destructive "free market" reign supreme.

The Koch brothers are bringing their super-wealthy friends to the California desert to a private gathering to strategize how they will dominate American political life, and bring a hardcore right-wing government to power in the U.S. In response, on Sunday, January 30, thousands of activists and concerned people are expected to travel to Rancho Mirage, a wealthy enclave adjacent to Palm Springs, to say no to the Koch brothers' plan. People will be educated about the Kochs and their cabal of rich friends, and peacefully march to offer an alternative to the greed and right-wing agenda that aims to roll back consumer protections, including the environment, health care, credit cards, banks and more.

"We can't sit back while a few billionaires destroy the fragile fabric of democracy and the protections that are so necessary for the health of our society," says Jodie Evans of CodePink, one of the organizations planning the protest. "It is time for the progressive community to gather together and say no more, and what better place than where the Koch brothers are plotting their next moves."

The Koch brothers protest signals a new stage among concerned Americans from many areas and organizations. An impressive tally of progressive leaders will speak at the gathering, including Van Jones, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and California Nurses Association co-president DeAnn McKewan. Marchers will come from a wide range of organizations including the California Nurses, Common Cause and the Courage Campaign.

The Kochs control the second largest private company in America and are among the richest men in the world. Along with their wealthy allies, they funded the Tea Party to use as a hammer to drive American politics further to the right. Through their various organizations, and often secretly, the Kochs have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to deny climate change, undermine financial reform, unleash unlimited corporate money in elections via the Citizens United decision, destroy unions, and make it far more expensive for students to get loans. And recently in California, Koch Industries pumped $1 million into elections last fall to try to roll back the state's global warming law with Prop 23.

They have been major underwriters of the Tea Party and its efforts to disrupt congressional town hall meetings to give the insurance companies control over our health care. The Koch brothers used their wealth to finance scurrilous attack ads -- and recruit others to do the same -- in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of secret money on politics. Their goal is to undermine our democracy so they can increase their profits and control and corrode our standard of living.

Learn about details for the event and sign up to attend or give support.

www.alternet.org/teaparty/149546/angry_progressive_coalition_to_protest_billionaire_gathering_hosted_by_koch_brothers%2C_major_tea_party_funders/

[robinking]

Jan 16, 2011 23:28:48 GMT -5 @lakhota said:

The Class War Launched by America's Wealthiest Is Getting More Savage

Countries with wide income inequality are unstable: they have large underclasses, high rates of crime and little opportunity. We’re in a class war.

It’s the corporations and the very wealthiest against all the rest of us. We’re losing.

In 1962 the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much. Is that a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, just a few of them a little bit higher? No.

From 1950 to 1965, median family income rose from $24,000 a year to $38,000 a year. That’s close to 4 percent a year, close to 60 percent over 15 years. That’s a rising tide.

In 1964 there was a big tax cut. That’s when things started to slow down for average people. By the mid-'70s the rise of the middle class stalled. From 1975 to 2010 median family income rose $42,936 to $49,777. That’s not quite 16 percent over 25 years, less than six-tenths of 1 percent per year.

Briefly, when taxes went up under Clinton, median income rose, peaked at $52,587 in 1999, and then, after Bush cut taxes, declined. Keep in mind that this is median family income. In the '50s and '60s, family income was usually earned by a single person. Today, family income normally comes from at least two people.

At the same time, income for the richest soared. In 1979 the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of all U.S. income. Now they earn 24 percent of all U.S. income. One percent of Americans earn nearly one-fourth of all the income in the country.

Then came the crashes of 2001 and 2008 and the recessions that followed.

The crash hasn’t changed anything. Things have become worse.

From 1990 to 2005, adjusted for inflation -- the minimum wage is down 9 percent, production workers’ pay is up only over 15 years 4.3 percent.

At the same time, the rich get richer:

Corporate profits are up 106.7 percent. The S&P 500 is still up 141.4 percent since 1990. CEO compensation is up 282 percent. Call it transfer of wealth. Or call it class warfare.

What’s wrong with the rich getting richer?

Slate's Timothy Noah, in "The United States of Inequality," wrote, “Income distribution in the United States [has become] more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.”

Take a look at that list.

Countries with wide income inequality don’t lead the world in research, technology, industry, and innovation. They’re unstable. They have large underclasses. They have high rates of crime. They have little opportunity.

In such countries the rich have disproportionate power. They take control of all aspects of society, especially government, the police, and the judiciary. They become self perpetuating.

If current trends continue, “The United States by 2043 will have the same income inequality as Mexico.” (Tula Connell, Mar 12, 2010, AFL-CIO Now.)

Countries with high levels of income inequality are third-world countries.

Here’s how regular people can deal with cultures of high inequality. The primary, and best, weapon is a progressive tax structure. As people move up the income ladder they pay a higher rate at each rung. Unearned income –from dividends and capital gains – is taxed at least as high as earned income (money that people actually work for.) Tax cuts for the wealthy mark, with great precision, the decline in fortunes of ordinary Americans. Tax cuts for the wealthy mark, with equal precision, the increase in inequality. We had a chance to slow the process by letting the last round, the Bush tax cuts, expire. We’ve lost that round.

People can become educated and move on up.

Back in the '60s, when I was growing up, New York City had free universities. The burgeoning SUNY system charged $400 tuition a semester. The minimum Regents scholarship was $400 a semester. If a student didn’t get one, he or she could easily earn enough to pay tuition with a summer job. The same held true for most state university systems across the country.

Today, students have to borrow. The median student debt for an undergraduate degree – forget about a doctorate, law school, and med school – is $20,000. The first, and truest, lesson you learn when you go to college is how to be in service to the banks.

We’ve lost that battle.

What does it mean?

“Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.

“Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.”

(Understanding Mobility in America, April 26, 2006, Tom Hertz, American University.)

Working people can organize and form unions. Unions do more than raise wages. They improve working conditions and safety. They provide protection against abuse, intimidation and wrongful dismissal. Non-union employers have to compete, partly to keep out unions, so the existence of unions helps everyone. Unions also have political power, they spend money and mobilize their members to vote.

Businesses have become very good at beating unions. And they’re getting better at it. According to Business Week, ("How Wal-Mart Keeps Unions at Bay,” 10/28/2002),"over the past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability to fend off labor groups."

In the 1940s a third of private sector employees were unionized. Now it’s down to just 7.2 percent. Unions only remain strong in the public sector, where membership is 37 percent.

If you read the papers or watch the news, you will see an anti-public service union story almost everyday. These are the people who teach your kids, pick up the trash, clean the sewers, drive the buses and trains, they’re the police and fireman. The stories will tell you their pension fund liabilities will bankrupt the states; that it’s unionized teachers who have ruined our schools. Charter schools – without unions – are the new favorite charity for billionaires.

When a country is, or becomes, a third-world country, the other thing people can do is run. To some place richer and freer. Like America.

But when America becomes Mexico, where you gonna run to?

www.alternet.org/economy/149531/the_class_war_launched_by_america%27s_wealthiest_is_getting_more_savage/?page=1

BINGO!!!! It's the banks! The Left and Right keep us divided, while the banksters steal from ALL of us. Yet, we continue to be divided by race-ethnicity, age, sex... When will people wake up and see it's the banksters who are the problem. They create money out of thin air and then charge us interest on it. When their schemes fail, we bail them out. When they succeed, they pay little in taxes. Under both circumstances, they take home massive bonuses. What do we get? Higher inflation, higher taxes (sales, property, income) and a continuous boom-bust cycle in the stock market. They suck us in with propaganda, and then pull out just before the crash. This has been the greatest wealth shift in world history!

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Yeah, yeah, yeah-- progressive = angry. Where's the news here?

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

When will people wake up and see it's the banksters who are the problem. They create money out of thin air and then charge us interest on it. When their schemes fail, we bail them out.

Wouldn't it be nice if people knew what they were talking about before posting?
Banks do not create or expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve does. Banks are only required to keep a certain predetermined level of reserves on hand. They can lend out a certain multiple of these reserves. This is refered to as the fractional reserve system.

[robinking]

Jan 17, 2011 11:49:03 GMT -5 Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ said:

When will people wake up and see it's the banksters who are the problem. They create money out of thin air and then charge us interest on it. When their schemes fail, we bail them out.

Wouldn't it be nice if people knew what they were talking about before posting?
Banks do not create or expand the money supply, the Federal Reserve does. Banks are only required to keep a certain predetermined level of reserves on hand. They can lend out a certain multiple of these reserves. This is refered to as the fractional reserve system.

Check your facts. Everytime a bank loans money, they have CREATED MONEY!!!!!!! How? Because they create a loan based on fractional reserve banking!

Example:

I deposit $100 in Bank A.
Bank A lends out $90 of it.
The person who got the loan now deposits the $90 in Bank B.
Bank B lends out $80 of it.
The person who got this loan deposits it in Bank C....
So, my $100 has now become $270!

Get YOUR facts straight!

[robinking]

The FED is responsible for M1 (paper money) I believe, but loaned money is still MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can spend borrowed money that is in my bank account, can't I? The digits in my account weren't created by the FED, if they came from a loan!

[robinking]

Easy to watch video on MONEY creation, not done by the FED.

[jkapp]

>>Briefly, when taxes went up under Clinton, median income rose, peaked at $52,587 in 1999, and then, after Bush cut taxes, declined. Keep in mind that this is median family income. In the '50s and '60s, family income was usually earned by a single person. Today, family income normally comes from at least two people.<<

Were taxes the factor in this or was it the boom and bust of the tech industry?

[robinking]

It doesn't matter who's in charge- Dem or Rep. the banking policies have made us ALL slaves to debt now. But, no one will admit it. So we get Liberals fighting with Conservatives. Who's to blame? Let's look for a group to point the finger at. Why not blame the rich? Let's blame the Baby Boomers or white people! How about the welfare moms or the deadbeat unemployed? Let's blame anyone but those who caused the problem in the first place... the banksters! Sure there will be plenty of people on here who will chirp about personal responsibility. And to some extent they're correct, but why should we have personal responsibility when the banks don't? They make bad decisions and WE pay for the bailout! How is this good fiscal policy? Oh well, blame the Tea Party or the Liberals I guess... anyone but the BANKSTERS!